


Oddities Observed, Vietnam 1968

by momebie (katilara)



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Drug Use, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-11-15 23:44:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18083249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katilara/pseuds/momebie
Summary: “There are people who care whether you live or die,” Dave said, because he felt it needed saying.He couldn’t imagine not caring. This man was erratic, but he was also fragile in a way Dave couldn’t quite put his finger on given how he was apparently also indestructible, and deeply intuitive about people and their moods. When he wasn’t as high as the army doctors’ pills and black-market heroin would allow, he was paying attention. Dave knew, because while Klaus was paying attention to the others, he was paying attention to Klaus.“Do you think?” Klaus pulled a joint out of his metal cigarette case, lit it, and took a hit. He offered it to Dave, who didn’t take it. He was always offering his things to Dave, even when he knew they weren’t things Dave wanted.“Yes,” he said. “I do.”(Or, Vietnam, but from Dave's point of view.)





	Oddities Observed, Vietnam 1968

**Author's Note:**

> Notes! 
> 
> 1\. Look, Vietnam was literal hell and a lot of us probably know someone living who is still affected by it no matter where we are in the world. While I've done research on the movements of the 173rd (Camp Radcliff for most of '68) and other period specific details, I have not done research on weapons or war tactics. This is not about those. All army movements here are vague and there is no onscreen conflict.  
> 2\. I just respect the gumption on Dave, you guys. He saw what he wanted and he went for it. Fuckin' superb!  
> 3\. There's some off-hand comics stuff mentioned here, but it doesn't take precedent over tv canon.  
> 4\. You know who dies. I'm sorry about canon. We all deserved better.  
> 5\. Do you think about Klaus's dancing in that flashback a lot? Because I sure do. WHAT A DWEEB. I LOVE HIM.  
> 6\. The first fic in a new fandom is always nerve wracking, but here goes nothing I guess!

Dave had not come into the war believing in ghosts or miracles. He’d never considered this an unfortunate or incurious trait in himself, just practical. There was simply nothing on the earth that couldn't be scientifically explained by some trick of fate or the light. Then a man he had never seen before appeared next to his cot in an explosion of lightning, which was followed closely by the shit absolutely exploding around them, and the engine in his mind stalled out trying to put it into the context of the ordinary.

Muscle memory took over, urging him up and away from the wonder of skin and wide, confused eyes.

_Put on a shirt. Put on a jacket. Grab your gun._

Before the war he had felt like a whole person, a person full of loves and wonders and frustrations. Not even his deepest, darkest fears had left him the space to consider that there might be a way to carve a man out, to separate him from the things that made him _him_. Then he ended up here. It was the he opposite of a miracle, the way he felt like he was fading into something of a ghost of himself, but it was a recorded phenomenon. He was just one man out of several million men and women being smoked out of their own bodies from the inside.

He had become a blank canvas over his last six months in country, learned to wait for the marks that would come, figuring out what to do with them when they appeared and only then. It didn’t do him any good trying to plan any of it out, so he didn’t.

_Gunfire. Orders. Gunfire. Run._

Perhaps, if he had allowed himself to believe in the ghosts of the dead as strongly as he’d come to believe in the ghosts of the living, he could have tried to write this bizarre new occurrence off as some sort of vengeful poltergeist activity. How many men had Dave seen covered in blood and a sheen of sweat, staring up at him with confusion and fear? He’d lost count. This could have been an imprint of any of them come back to remind him that every one of them had been a human, that he was a murderer now, not any of the other things he had been before.

_A split second of silence like falling off a cliff. The whistle of death falling from the sky. Run. Run. Run._

Probably it was a gross stress reaction. More and more men were having them. He’d known it was only a matter of time before all of it caught up with him.

Then the man from nowhere spoke and stood and pulled on the pants that were thrust at him and all of them were off, to throw themselves at certain death for the thousandth time.

_Out of the tent. Into the dark. Dark into flashes of red and white. Calm into tumult. Curiosity into certainty._

As they bustled out of the tent, he let himself drift a half inch to the right and bump into the poltergeist. He was solid for a ghost, and looked back at Dave with dazed, terrified eyes. He smelled like a lightning storm, sharp and electric with a hint of the dirt they were all covered in and the damp that had seeped its way into their bones. It was threatening and comforting.

He wanted to touch him again, to see if there would still be sparks left over, but they had a mission and he was already falling behind.

_Live. Live. Live._

He managed to hold off on reaching out until after the ozone cleared.

 

* * *

 

This war was, all in all, Dave’s least favorite way to gamble, because survival didn’t seem to depend on how much training or equipment a man had. Often it seemed like the difference between life and death was a half inch in any direction. There was no guiding hand, no way of knowing if you were going the right way. All a man could do was fall into step and pray that the person at the front of the line had the divine insight he himself lacked.

The poltergeist fell into step too. There was something frenetic and uncertain about him. His movements were awkward. He favored parts of his body like he was injured. Dave wondered what hell he had been through before he’d been unceremoniously dumped into their tent. The poltergeist watched the others closely to see what his cues should be, but when it was time to decompress, he refused to make eye contact or talk to anyone. Mostly he hunkered down on his own and stared at the briefcase that he carried everywhere, ran his hands up and down his chest like he was taking inventory of his ribs, and gently prodded at the bruising around his neck.

The briefcase was an odd sort of pack to be sent to a jungle with, but Dave had no idea what was happening back home. For all he knew they'd run out of canvas and denim to make the more traditional packs. If he removed the mystery from the case, then the rest of the scene was simple and common. Just a man taking stock of his life, sweating in the humidity and shaking with...Dave didn't know what. Could be fear. Could be anything. They had all gone through it.

On the second night the poltergeist jerked his head up too quickly for Dave to look away and caught Dave staring at him. Dave should have been embarrassed, but he was too curious for it. Things like embarrassment were of no use in a war anyway, so he’d cast it out early on, along with the shyness that had been second nature to him all of his life and the manners his mom had tried to make second nature to him.

The poltergeist’s eyes were dark, the remnants of kohl or something like it ringing them in peeling black flakes that made it look like he was succeeding in smudging himself out. Through all of it, it was easy to see that he had a fine face: sharp cheekbones, defined jaw, stubble filling in the pale skin between his thicker patches of facial hair. It was also easy to see that this man was utterly lost, some haggard spirit caught in transition. Dave gave him a nod and he smiled back in a slow, bewildered way. He raised his hand in a half wave and Dave could see that the word HELLO had been tattooed there in thick black lines. Curious.

Dave gave him a half salute and rolled over on his cot so that he could no longer see him. He hoped that this forlorn spirit didn't evaporate before morning. For the first time in months Dave was making a plan for the next day, looking forward to discovering whatever curious things about the poltergeist man there were to discover.

 

* * *

 

The poltergeist’s name was Klaus and he was not a poltergeist or a spirit after all, just a lost person trying to acclimate to an impossible situation and doing so poorly.

His voice was softer than Dave thought it would be. He’d assumed that a man who looked like that would speak confidently, would be used to garnering attention and being heard. Klaus didn't seem to expect any attention at all. He had a habit of trailing off mid-thought when he spoke and getting easily distracted by the action around them.

They were on transport, bumping wildly down the rough road toward Camp Radcliffe, which was to be their new home base while the regiment recovered. Dave asked Klaus about where he was from and Klaus started to answer, something about brothers and sisters—a family he'd left back home whom he was certain wouldn't miss him—but then he'd stopped and stared past Dave out the window at the burnt foliage and torn up fields. It was a scene Dave had become used to, one he didn't even notice anymore.

Not the way he noticed Klaus.

"Hey," he said. He reached up and touched Klaus's face, a gesture that would have turned the man's head if he'd pressed in, but he let the touch just glance off the roughness of his unshaven cheek. Maybe Klaus didn't have a razor in that strange case of his.

Klaus pulled his head back, reached up and ran his fingertips over the place Dave had just touched. Dave noticed that he had something written on the inside of his other palm in the same thick black strokes as the HELLO, but he couldn’t quite make it out.

"Where'd you go?" Dave asked.

"I don't know," he said. "Just...looking for someone."

"You know people in country?"

Klaus shook his head, slowly, and then more vigorously, as if he was shaking away flies. "No, just someone I haven't been without in a long time. I keep expecting him to be there."

Dave took these words in and turned them over.

"We've all left people behind," he said, careful not to insinuate the hope that was forming in his gut.

Klaus's eyes strayed again. "I didn't know I was capable of leaving him behind."

"None of us knew."

Klaus looked at him then, brow furrowed and face serious. He was still fading, still caught in the throes of some sort of change. He seemed to be carrying something much heavier than he was.

"You okay, man?" Dave asked.

Klaus ran his hands over his face. "No, but I've been worse. I don't suppose they ever slip any speed into your rations."

_Oh_ , Dave thought. _Withdrawal_. That would explain the sweating and the shivering and the scratching and the way Klaus never seemed to stop moving.

Dave had known many men in the war who were avid users of the copious amounts of drugs that seemed to be on offer here. Most days it was harder to be sober than not, though he stubbornly insisted on remaining so. He’d seen the things strung out men did to people who had the misfortune of simply being in their paths. He might be a state sanctioned murderer now, but he was still clinging to the tatters of his pre-war morals.

He’d only known one other man who seemed strung as tightly as Klaus was. That man was dead now.

"No, but we can figure something out until we get to Saigon. Men're always showing up with stuff, and if you talk to the right CO they’ll prescribe you something pretty strong for stress."

"What's in Saigon?" Klaus asked.

Dave slid down in his seat and tipped his head back so that only Klaus's forehead and mess of hair were in his line of vision. So that he stopped staring at his chapped lips and the fading bruises on his neck. "Oh," he said. "Everything, man."

 

* * *

 

Before Saigon there was being ambushed. Before being ambushed there was rappelling into the thick jungle canopy for long range reconnaissance. Even before rappelling into the jungle there were a few deaths. Klaus came away from every one of them with a dazed expression and a hollowness in his eyes that sometimes lasted for days. It made Dave worry about himself more than he was worried for the new guy. He was worried that maybe he was losing the little bit of humanity he'd thought he had left, because he didn’t feel as hollow as Klaus looked.

Before the war he'd thought he cared a lot about people. That's why he'd left home in the first place, to see more of them. To learn about more of them. Now he was half a world away learning the intimate ins and outs of a country that would have been beautiful ten years earlier, and he hated it.

Watch was usually the loneliest shift of any reconnaissance jaunt, but Klaus slept so little he'd taken to joining Dave when it was his turn. Sometimes they talked and sometimes they sat in silence, staring out into the darkness with narrowed eyes, looking for stray movement or light. This perfectly suited Dave, who had been consistently exhausted for months and welcomed any moment of stillness.

Klaus was ill-suited to stillness. He seemed to run on frenetic energy and the possibility of tomorrow. He'd told Dave one night that that was why he didn’t like to sleep, because he had a constant need to know _when_ it was and how much longer there was left in a night, how much longer there might be left in his life.

Dave had said, _is_ _death that heavy?_

Klaus had blown out a long stream of pot smoke and said, _it depends on how much of it you can’t ignore._

Dave had patiently reminded him that time didn't care about them, that he might as well get on with taking care of himself, because time wasn't going to. Klaus had nodded in complete agreement and fidgeted his feet around the briefcase where it sat on the ground behind him. He still brought it with him everywhere, which seemed inconvenient to Dave, but he couldn’t live the man’s life for him.

“What made you join the army?” Klaus asked. He sat down next to Dave and began to unlace his boots.

Dave watched him loosen the tongue as wide as it could go. He didn’t take them off—if he was caught around camp with them off there would be consequences—but he did slide his sockless feet partially out of them and stretch his arches and wiggle his toes.

“The draft,” Dave said. “I was going to end up here anyway, so I made a decision instead of letting it be made for me.”

Before, when he’d envisioned seeing the world, he had not envisioned spending his 26th birthday in a rice field or that the birthday letter from his mother would come two months late with lines blacked out. There was a whole intimate life happening away from him that he was a part of, but not a part of. It was hard not to feel a sense of loss over that.

Klaus lit a cigarette and offered it to Dave.

Dave shook his head. “I don’t smoke.”

Klaus shrugged and put the cigarette between his teeth. “Really? You some kind of straight edge, Dave? I’ve got a brother like that. Claims his body is a temple.”

Dave didn’t know what a straight edge was, but he assumed Klaus meant sober. He raised an eyebrow. “And your body?”

“My body is the god damned Oracle at Delphi.” Klaus removed the cigarette from his lips and waved it through the air in the rough shape of a person. The light arced through the night. “And anyone can have a piece of it for a price.”

“Oh?” Dave asked, casual. “How much?”

“More than they’re paying you, big guy.” Klaus reached up with his free hand and patted Dave on the thigh. “Certainly more than they’re paying me.”

“Why are you here?”

“I don’t know,” Klaus said. “But it reminds me of home. Maybe that’s why.”

“You must have one hell of a home.”

Klaus laughed. The sound was a high staccato. Dave had never known another person to laugh as much as Klaus did, or to sound as utterly unhinged when they did it.

“I did, Dave. I did. All of us little soldiers in one way or another. We used to be a team. Now we’re just…”

When he didn’t finish the sentence Dave looked down to see that Klaus was sitting cross legged on the ground now with his feet pulled mostly out of his boots, an arm propped on each knee, and his hands palm up. The right palm, which he’d noticed that second night, said HELLO, and the left one said GOODBYE. There was a third tattoo on his left forearm, an umbrella in a neat circle.

The question Dave wanted to ask was about the tattoos, the _why_ of them. Instead he said, “What?”

“We’re nothing,” Klaus said. He put the cigarette back into his mouth and dropped both arms into his lap. He muttered, “Come on, Ben. I know you’re there. You’re always there.”

Dave didn’t ask who Ben was. He wasn’t sure he really wanted to know. It had to be someone who was already tangled up in the intimate life inside of Klaus which, unlike the intimate life of Dave’s family back home, Dave was not enough of a part of to justify feeling this much like he was missing out. He wanted to be. This sense of pre-loss, of ignoring a connection that was right in front of him, was not a feeling he’d expected to have out here, but it was there now and there was no ignoring that.

He wanted to know every part of this strange, poltergeist of a human and there was a 0% chance he would get all of him. Klaus was talkative though, so if Dave hung around he was sure to get at least a little more.

At relief they went back to their tent. Klaus didn't lie down to sleep. He opted instead to sit up and smoke cigarette after cigarette before dipping into his one last joint. Dave kept his eyes trained on the light flaring at the tips of each one until he passed out. Unlike Klaus, sleep was usually taking him with no problem.

 

* * *

 

Klaus was standing in the corner of the barracks in front of a small round mirror, shaving and muttering to himself. Dave was ostensibly blacking his boots, but really he was cataloguing the new marks that had been etched into the pale canvas of Klaus’s skin since the last time he’d seen him shirtless.

The other men sometimes talked about Klaus like he was possessed, as if he carried the dead with him. Dave didn’t think Klaus carried any more of the dead than any of them, but the muttering and strange physical ticks didn’t help. They were afraid to get too close, lest some of that stain rub off on their souls as well. The more distance they kept the closer Dave got. Klaus simply didn’t worry him.

That was, Klaus simply didn’t worry him until he brandished his razor at the empty space next to him and hissed, “Back the fuck away from me, Tietz.”

Alvin Tietz had been a member of the 173rd for more than two years in country and had only recently been killed in a skirmish. It was still a fresh wound for most of them.

A heavy quiet fell over the men in the area—not a bed creaked, not a canteen dripped, not a jacket rustled—and a look passed between them. It was a look Dave had seen before. He knew that, whatever was going to come after it, it was not going to be good for morale.

He put on his boots. Then he stood up and stretched his arms over his head, cracking his knuckles and the muscles in his neck by way of warning. He walked to where Klaus was standing, gently grabbed his elbow, and used it to steer him away from the grungy mirror, through the barracks, and outside, away from the look and the silence and the brewing fear.

The moment they were outside Klaus jerked his elbow away and rubbed at it with the knuckles of his right hand, which was still gripping the razor.

“You can back the fuck up too,” he said, but if he meant to sound intimidating he failed. He sounded more tired than anything. Klaus had been keeping his eyes blacked with kohl like they had been the day he’d shown up, but the bags beneath them were starting to show through the smudges of it.

“When was the last time you slept?” Dave asked.

“You’re not my mother.”

“No, I’m not, but maybe you need one.”

Klaus scowled and dipped his head, still worrying at his elbow with his knuckles, beating them against it one by one like he was picking out a song. He stood that way for almost a minute. Then he lifted his head, opened his mouth, closed it again, and dipped his head back down. He wiped his hands over his face, taking some of the soap lather with them when he rested them on the back of his neck.

“Just,” he said quietly. “Just make them leave me alone.”

Dave blinked, looking around them at the empty back of the barracks and the rest of camp beyond. “Who?”

“The men,” Klaus said.

“The men barely talk to you.”

Klaus shook his head. He took a heave of a breath and then began speaking faster than Dave had ever heard anyone speak. “I’ve taken so many pills, and usually that will do it, you know? It’s never been perfect, but most days before I got here Ben was the only one I saw and I honestly think that’s more down to his will than mine, because I never wanted to see him after, after—which I know sounds cruel I know it does, but listen, usually they present with their wounds and he was so. I refused to look at him for so long and then when I did and he was whole I cried. I did, and he made fun of me for it, which just made it worse because he wasn’t just a shade of who he had been, he was him, there but not. And it’s not that—”

“Klaus,” Dave said, cutting him off. “Breathe. You’re not making any sense. Who is Ben? Who are they?”

“The dead,” Klaus whispered. “I thought they were loud at home, but they are so loud here.”

Dave’s first instinct was to laugh, because that was one of the most absurd things he’d ever heard in his life. He didn’t claim to have the answers to life’s more esoteric mysteries, but he did know that the only truly unexplained thing he’d ever seen happen in his life had not been because of the dead. It had been a living person, and that person was standing here in front of him, solid and real and frustrating because all Dave wanted to do all of the time was hold on to Klaus, to keep him from disappearing as violently as he’d appeared in the first place.

Dave had survived the war just fine for the six months before Klaus arrived, but now that he’d had him for the better part of two months he didn’t think he’d very much like to even attempt surviving another six months without him.

Klaus was watching him with the same bright intent Dave had seen him place down the barrel of his rifle and Dave knew that if this hadn’t started as a test, it was one now. The swallowed laugh turned jagged and hysterical in his throat and even though there was no breeze, a shiver ran up his spine like breath in a reed.

“The dead,” he said.

“Tietz wanted me to tell Cunningham that there was $50,000 worth of rare coins in his attic and there was no one to collect them, so he might as well take them to start his tobacco shop for real.”

“There’s no way,” Dave said.

Klaus gritted his teeth and pointed the razor at him. “Look, I don’t need you to believe me. People rarely do, but you asked and I told you, so you can do whatever the fuck you want with that. I’m going to go request they up my dose of LSD. At least then the things I see that no one else can won’t try to do anything as asinine as appeal to my sense of decency. Because let me tell you, of the eight full senses I have, that’s not one of them, and Tietz should know that!”

He said that last part to the empty space to Dave’s left. Dave looked, half expecting to see Tietz standing there. He almost wished he could. It was still a little weird to not see him among the men. There was still an echo in the emptiness around where he had been.

When there was nothing to see he reached out and placed his hand on Klaus’s shoulder. “Hey, no,” he said quietly. “I meant there’s no way anyone as young as Tietz has that much money just stashed in a house somewhere.”

“You shouldn’t talk about the dead where they can hear you,” Klaus said, still looking at the space where Tietz wasn’t.

Dave did let himself laugh then. “Why? What’s he gonna do? Get annoyed and shoot me with his ghost gun?”

“Not at all, it’s just that sometimes,” Klaus turned his head to focus on Dave’s hand and licked his lips. “They have a tendency to talk back.”

 

* * *

 

Dave woke up when something heavy glanced off his shoulder and landed on the other side of his bed.

“What the—?”

“He’s your friend,” Cunningham said from his right. “Shut him up.”

Dave sat up and looked into the darkness of the barracks to see ten pairs of eyes staring back at him from their beds. It took another second for the noise to register. At first it was just a quiet mewling, but then there was a louder sound that was half laugh, half sob. Dave whipped his head around to the left to look at Klaus’s bed.

The man was curled up in a tight ball. He’d kicked his covers off and the pillow was probably only still there because Klaus had it in his fist like he was trying to choke it out. He growled something that was mostly unintelligible, but Dave could make out the name Ben and the words _get out_.

Cunningham hissed at him to make him get a move on.

“Okay, okay.”

Dave eased himself off his mattress and approached Klaus’s bed, aware that he was being watched intently by everyone. He reached out, gently grabbed on to Klaus’s shoulder, and shook him. “Hey,” he said. “Klaus?”

Klaus swung an arm out and knocked Dave’s hand away. He sat bolt upright and stared back at him in complete silence. Dave wasn’t sure whether he was awake or not, but his eyes were open and he was looking dead at him in a way that made the hair stand up along the back of Dave’s neck.

“Thank God,” Green said. The sound of ten men settling back into their beds rippled through the room.

Dave lowered himself onto Klaus’s mattress. Klaus’s right hand was splayed onto the sheets. It was hidden from everyone else’s view by Dave’s body, so he felt safe covering it with his own hand. Klaus blinked a few times and used his left hand to wipe at his eyes.

“Hey, Dave,” he said hesitantly. “What-what’s going on?”

“You’re going on,” Dave said, giving his hand a squeeze. “You were putting on a one man show and the riffraff here didn’t appreciate it.”

Another boot came at Dave from Cunningham’s direction, but managed to miss him and bounce harmlessly onto the floor.

Klaus looked down at their hands. “Sorry,” he said in a whisper.

“Nothing to be sorry for. Wanna go for a walk?”

Klaus nodded and Dave let go of his hand. He stood and pulled on his boots. Klaus he noticed did not pull on his boots, just crawled into an undershirt and stood watching Dave deal with his laces.

Neither of them spoke again until they were a good hundred feet from the sleeping quarters. It was Klaus who broke first. He rubbed a hand through his already messy hair, making it stand up more, and said, “I didn’t mean to—”

“No,” Dave said, cutting him off. He steered them toward the toilets. “There’s nothing to be sorry for. You think you’re the first man to have a bad dream here?”

“They seem to act like I am,” Klaus said sourly. “They seem to act like everything I do is a novel insult.”

“They’re thinking about themselves, not you. I think you intimidate them a little.”

Klaus laughed. “Yeah, I’m sure that’s what it is. It’s not because I’m a spooky fucker on a good day. It’s that I’m just so, so strong and manly.”

He flexed his arms and Dave bit his lip because, actually, Klaus had filled out some since he’d gotten there. Whether it was a manly amount or not Dave couldn’t say, but it was certainly affecting. To him at least.

“They’re all worried I’m gonna break their benching records and steal their girlfriends,” Klaus finished.

“Every one of their girlfriends could do better and we know it.”

Dave held the door to the toilets open and waited for Klaus to go inside. He followed behind without turning on the lights and leaned against the wall next to the row of dark sinks. Klaus turned on the water two sinks down and stuck his head directly under the faucet to drink from it. Dave crossed his arms and watched.

When Klaus was done he turned the water off and stood upright again, wiping at his lips with the back of his arm. “Ten girlfriends might be pushing it, even for me. I do like having a girlfriend every once in a while. They’re soft. And it’s always nice getting an extended wardrobe.”

“Do you not share clothing with other men?” Dave asked. The ‘who you date’ was silent, but implied. This was the closest Dave had managed to come to asking Klaus about his preferences and it felt like a daring thing to say, even in the dark.

“Not usually. Most of the men back home have such boring taste. I would die before I put on khakis, Dave, and you can quote me on that. Put it on my grave: Klaus Hargreeves, son, brother, preening mother fucker, never wore khakis.” He blocked out the space for each bit of text with his hands in the air.

“I wear khakis,” Dave said.

Klaus, who had only ever seen Dave in army regulation green, looked him up and down and said, “So I imagine you do.”

“Klaus, who is Ben?”

There was a shift in the tightness of the atmosphere between them the moment he said the name, like some of the oxygen had been pulled out of the room.

Klaus put his hands on the sink and looked down into the cracked basin. “He was my brother,” he said quietly. “He died when we were teenagers. Doing, doing something stupid that we had all been sent to do. It was always about the mission with Dad. He was rarely ever concerned about how scathed we were when we came out of it. I think it was more annoying to him that he’d spent all that money raising Ben and didn’t have anything to show for it any longer.”

“I’m sorry,” Dave said, because he was. He had seen so many people die and he still couldn’t imagine what it would be like to watch a brother die, someone he’d grown up with and shared his life discoveries with. A whole separate bank of his history that was just…gone.

“Yeah. It’s, uh, it’s been rough not having him around.”

Dave remembered what Klaus had said after the Tietz incident, but he wasn’t sure how to bring it up. Even if Klaus could see the dead as if they were physically there, it couldn’t be the same as being surrounded by the living. Even if Klaus could sometimes still see his brother, like he’d been trying to do since he got there, it had to be different than having someone to share affection with. To share his life with.

Klaus pushed away from the sink and closed the distance between them. He leaned against the wall next to Dave. Their shoulders were touching. “You wanna hear something depressing?”

“Sure,” Dave said.

“I don’t have my own bed back home. I mean, the one I slept in growing up is still there, but I hadn’t been in it in thirteen years before the old man died. I just couldn’t bring myself to go back when it was just him and Pogo and Mom alone in that big empty house. But I also couldn’t hold down my own place like the rest of my siblings manage to. I always seem to lose any money I find.”

“Lose?”

“Fine!” Klaus gasped in exasperation. “Smoke, I smoked it. Or I inhaled it. Or I shot it up. Or I swallowed it dry. And I went and went and went until I just couldn’t go anymore. You don’t need a place to sleep if you’re not planning on lying down. And if you’re tired enough, you can sleep anywhere.”

“What about your girlfriends? Or your boyfriends? Or whatever.”

“Some of them had beds. Some of them had nice beds. Some of them had nice tubs which was even better, but I was never with any of them long enough to know what it felt like to wear your own little you shape into your part of the mattress. I know this will come as a complete shock, but I’m kind of hard to live with.”

“I don’t believe it,” Dave said, even though he absolutely did believe it. He hadn’t known any addicts back home, but he’d now known several in the war and even with the forced structure their behavior could range in the extremes. Klaus’s behavior had ranged in the extremes, but Dave got the sense that he was trying to rein some of it in. He did not hold the delusion that it was for his sake.  

He elbowed Klaus in the side.

Klaus elbowed him back three times in quick succession. “Especially on heroin. Don’t do heroin, Dave.”

“Okay, okay!” Dave wheezed. He reached to catch Klaus’s elbow before it could hit him again. Klaus turned his face and smirked up at him. They were so close together he could feel Klaus’s breath on his chest.

“I won’t,” Dave said.

Klaus licked his lips and Dave followed the movement with his eyes. Three inches, maybe four, all he had to do was lean just a little, and then he would know if his dreams were accurate or not. He ached with the wanting of it, but he couldn’t do it, not without knowing for sure if Klaus would be okay with it. Klaus placed his right hand on Dave’s chest, splayed his fingers out to take up as much space as possible.

_HELLO_.

Dave half expected Klaus to push him away, but he didn’t. He just rested his hand there, warmth seeping through the cotton of Dave’s t-shirt and into his skin.

_HELLO._

After several long minutes that felt like the whole night to Dave, Klaus said, “I have to piss.”

He closed his fingers around the fabric of Dave’s shirt, dragging him forward an inch, and then let go. He walked around the short wall that partitioned the sinks from the urinals and then let out a huge yawn as the sound of urine hitting the splash plate rang through the building.

“I wish I had a proper bed,” Dave said quietly to the empty space next to him. “I’d let you wear any shape you wanted in it.”

“What’s that?” Klaus called.

“Nothing!” Dave called back. “I’m gonna try to get back to sleep!” He beat a solo retreat back to his bed like the coward he’d always been afraid he was.

 

* * *

 

Some days that half inch between life and death felt closer than a half inch. The sound of gunfire in the brush was like missile aimed mosquitoes, a chorus of quick _bzzzt_ noises that would sometimes draw blood, sometimes draw the life out of a man altogether, and sometimes miss entirely, leaving everyone shaken but somehow whole. They lived with the knowledge that there were high odds that would be the last sound any of them would hear. And that was if they were second-tier lucky, which made every successive hearing of it with time after to consider those odds more surreal than the last.

Klaus, like any self-respecting poltergeist of a human, was bad at moving in any sort of formation. He was getting better, and it didn’t appear he wanted to disrupt the proceedings, just that he was responding to environmental input that no one else could see. Even when there was only a thin line of trail he would vary from it. Still, he somehow managed to never stray into the deadly territory of that half inch.

There were several times when Klaus would move away from a tree only to reveal that there were fresh bullets lodged into the trunk of it that would have had to go through him in order to find that home.

The first time Dave pointed this out to him Klaus just shrugged.

“Maybe they’re older,” he said.

Judging by the bark visible at the tear Dave was positive they were not older. When he pressed the matter Klaus would look off into the distance and say, “Maybe it’s just not my time.”

And maybe it wasn’t. That conviction, that there was a time and place for everyone to die, was shared among most of the men gathered. If you didn’t die in today’s assignment you just had tomorrow’s to look forward to. They would all look forward to tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow until there was no tomorrow to look forward to. It was the same with everyone everywhere, he supposed, but he certainly hadn’t thought about life and death as being that thinly delineated until he ended up in the shit.

“Why not?” Dave asked one evening as they were pushing through the underbrush in the twilight.

Klaus looked over his shoulder so he could make eye contact. “Why not what?”

“Why isn’t it your time?”

Klaus shrugged. “Dunno, just doesn’t feel like I’m meant to die in 1968.”

“Statistically,” Dave said, “by January of 1969, a lot of people are going to be meant to die in 1968. Maybe even more than usual.”

Klaus laughed at that and it buoyed Dave’s mood by half a notch. “Oh, sure.”

“Do you ever think about them?”

“The soon to be dead? No, they don’t keep me up nights.”

“You shouldn’t take the dead so personally,” Dave said.

“Easy for you to say, you don’t have to listen to them all the time. They rarely say anything interesting and they never shut the fuck up.”

Dave was still not sure whether he believed in ghosts, but he believed that Klaus believed in them, and he believed that Klaus wasn’t making up all of the stories he shared from them when they were just sitting and waiting to be moved, or ordered to move, or shot at.

It was probably obvious to anyone with eyes that Dave and Klaus seemed to come to rest against each other exclusively, but Dave didn’t really care. It wasn’t as if anyone else was vying for Klaus’s attention, given how spooked they all still were by his odd behavior.

Dave knew it wasn’t strange for a soldier to find his corresponding other on the battlefield. That was a tendency with a long and storied past in history and myth. It was a theme that came up again and again in his grandfather’s stories of WWII. It was maybe a little strange to spend so much time thinking about that other person’s face when you weren’t looking at it, as if it was burned into your retinas and had become overlay to the rest of your life. But since none of them, Klaus included as far as he knew, could read minds, he didn’t care about that either.

“I meant your family.”

Klaus did not laugh at that. He didn’t even answer. He bent his head forward and picked up the pace, closing the distance between himself and Sevetz, which Dave took to mean that the conversation was over.

They walked patrol for another hour before making it back to camp and Klaus did not say a word the entire way. It wasn’t until they were huddled over a tasteless bowl of necessary calories in the mess that he broke.

“I just kind of miss them and all of our stupid problems, which, incredibly, seem more mundane now. Which is, you know, objectively stupid because I’m sure they haven’t even noticed I’m gone.”

Dave finished chewing. “You’ve been here for three months.”

Klaus shook his head. “They never really notice if I’m not there. Too busy trying to save the world from themselves. Or, I guess, they are so used to me not being there that it never seems strange that I’m not. They just assume I’m off…” he flipped his hand toward the roof.

“Fighting someone else’s war because you have very bad birthday luck?”

Klaus giggled and wiped a hand over his face.

“What?”

“We all have the same birthday,” he said, and then, before Dave could ask further, “No, making bad decisions.”

“I can’t think of a bad enough decision either of us have made ever in our lives that would warrant ending up here.”

“I can.” Klaus sighed and it turned into a manic, high pitched laugh. “But hey, this beats torture, or worse, rehab.”

“There are people who care whether you live or die,” Dave said, because he felt it needed saying.

He couldn’t imagine not caring. This man was erratic, but he was also fragile in a way Dave couldn’t quite put his finger on given how he was apparently also indestructible, and deeply intuitive about people and their moods. When he wasn’t as high as the army doctors’ pills and black-market heroin would allow, he was paying attention. Dave knew, because while Klaus was paying attention to the others, he was paying attention to Klaus.

“Do you think?” Klaus pulled a joint out of his metal cigarette case, lit it, and took a hit. He offered it to Dave, who didn’t take it. He was always offering his things to Dave, even when he knew they weren’t things Dave wanted.

“Yes,” he said. “I do.”

 

* * *

 

Saigon was an explosion of an entirely different kind. The colors and the people, the sounds of motor cars and street food vendors and the bustle of other people’s everyday lives, it all managed to edge out the nightmare of the last four months. It was a bit like returning to Oz after killing the witch. They all knew exactly where the horrors were in relation to this place and still, this place remained for the time being. He hoped it would always remain.

Klaus, who had still not explained to Dave how he managed to end up in camp wearing only a towel and a jacket, did not have any civvies, so they went to find him some. He seemed to take great care in the different things he looked at, but they were all equally as nonsensical to Dave, who even at home lived in denim and khakis and button up shirts. Things you could get dirty.

Dave felt like, in spite of all known appearances to the contrary, Klaus did not actually spend much of his life back home dirty. Or at least, not the same kind of dirty Dave had learned to anticipate.

He was following Klaus through a half outdoor, half indoor market space and watching as he very reverently picked out pants and shirts with wild geometric or floral patterns and compared them to one another. He stopped next to a mannequin wearing a dark brown leather miniskirt and ran his finger from the waist to the hem, then placed the finger against his lips as if he was making a decision that would alter more than the next week of his life.

“We’re here for you,” Dave said.

Klaus sighed and said, “I know, and I do so prefer black.”

He moved on through the racks and left Dave standing there thinking about this long-limbed man with his black rimmed eyes and his perpetual stubble and just how short the skirt would actually be on him. The thought was overwhelming and inconvenient, so he put it away for later.

On the far wall of the stall there was a long rack of different types of áo dài hanging in a shimmering rainbow of colors and floral patterns. Dave watched Klaus walk the length of it, running his hand through the fabric the way a kid might run their hand along a chain link fence. When he got to the end of the rack he stopped and looked down at the clothing he was holding. His face did a complicated maneuver between light and heavy that Dave didn’t totally understand, and then he passed off the whole pile to a passing attendant before heading back to the men’s section and finding something more muted.

In the end he came away with what Dave still considered to be a challenging combination of stripes on his slacks and his shirt. The shop owner offered to have Klaus’s things sent back to the base, so Klaus changed into the clothing there. The shirt itself just barely kissed the waistband of the slacks, which meant that every time he moved there was a flash of stomach or hip bone. Dave walked behind him as they left.

Back out on the street Klaus turned to Dave and said, “Man, I could really use a drink.”

Dave took a deep breath and let out a long sigh, which was definitely not a thing he had been prone to doing before he met Klaus. It was just that sometimes, with Klaus around, he needed a second for his brain to restart.

“Yeah,” he said finally. “I could too.”

The women at the dance club took to Klaus almost immediately. They brought the two of them round after round of shots and the more Klaus drank the looser his whole body got. Dave had been watching him try to drown out the voices and the gunfire with narcotics for months now, and even when those did manage to even out the fear in him he still looked jumpy and tightly wound, like a man with one foot in the ocean and one foot in his grave. The alcohol, on the other hand, seemed to wash all of that away.

The drunker Dave got the closer to Klaus he let himself dance. Not that anyone could dance too closely to him without some level of risk, with the way he insisted on waving his arms and kicking his legs out. Klaus dancing was more of an approximation of what dancing could be if a turkey described it to a goose.

Women kept trying to button him up, to place their arms around him and push him toward one of the darker corners. Klaus would let this happen for a song or so—swaying with the women, letting them touch him wherever they liked, but never actually letting himself be led anywhere—before excusing himself to go to the bar.

Women were also trying to button Dave up, but not with the same level of interest. He wondered if he and the women were seeing the same thing in Klaus, or if months of fighting next to Klaus through the rain and the heat and the muck and the blood had given him a more specific sort of interest in the man. Their eyes met across the dance floor several times and every time Klaus’s face was unreadable, which unnerved Dave slightly, because of how expressive he usually was.

Dave kept waiting for the lightning that had first announced Klaus’s presence in the tent to come back and announce his presence in Dave’s life, for there to be a definitive place he could point to and say that this was the moment he fell for the man, but there was no electricity there. Only fondness, and a fair amount of common, everyday lust. Klaus had awkward movements and fine features, he said weird and inscrutable things almost non-stop, he cried as often as he laughed and he didn’t care who saw either. He was unpredictable, and sometimes he was downright mean, and Dave couldn’t stop finding the beauty in either thing.

Maybe Klaus himself was the lightning. Dave had been holding his breath for months now, waiting to be shocked. Maybe the only thing for it was to rush right into the storm.

He saw Klaus make his unsteady way to the bar and followed. As he approached Sevetz was being pulled away from the drink that had just been set in front of him. Dave nodded at him and Sevetz winked. Dave stopped next to Klaus at the bar and bumped their shoulders together as he dropped his elbows onto the bar top. Klaus looked at him with a curious side glance.

“How are you?” Dave asked.

Klaus shrugged. “Fine. Tired. Frustrated, well, you know.”

“Yeah.” Dave held up four fingers and the bartender nodded at him. “I really do.”

When the four shots of rum appeared, he pushed two at Klaus.

“Why, Dave,” he gasped, quietly dramatic. “Are you trying to get me drunk?”

Dave picked up one of the shots and rolled his eyes. “You are already drunk.”

“So I am,” he said, and gingerly picked up a shot of his own. “Cheers!”

Before Dave could throw his shot back Klaus linked his wrist around Dave’s and drew him closer as he downed his drink.

Dave watched the movement of his throat, watched him lick his lips, watched him tilt his head down and stare back at Dave with a challenge in his eyes. Dave took his shot. The next round was the same, except Dave didn’t let himself be left behind, and as they disentangled to put the glasses down Klaus swayed and fell into Dave’s side.

“Is there a place to sit? I’m afraid if I don’t sit I will end up on the floor.”

Dave looped his arm through Klaus’s, picked up Sevetz’s forgotten drink, and walked them toward the nearest doorway. He didn’t know what was beyond it, but his attention had been caught by the way the beads in its curtain caught the swaying lights.

The area through the doorway wasn’t quite a hallway and it wasn’t quite a vestibule, but it was darker and a little quieter and they were the only two people there for the moment. Klaus leaned against the wall and Dave leaned next to him, their shoulders not quite touching. Klaus pulled out a cigarette and lit it. He offered it to Dave. Dave shook his head and Klaus took a drag off it and then reached over and plucked the drink from Dave’s hands.

“One of us should sober up,” he said. “So we can find our way home.”

“I have no doubt the US Army could come and find us if they missed us enough.”

“Hm, you maybe. I’m not sure they ever really put me on the roster.” Klaus took a sip of the drink and grimaced. “Jesus that’s sweet. And what would they find, if they had to come find us?”

“I don’t know.” Dave said, taking the drink from Klaus’s hand and taking a sip. He frowned and gave the drink back to Klaus who took it, laughing. “I’ve always wanted a small house on a medium bit of land in the country.”

“Oh, any country in particular?”

“Not this one, no offense to the locals. I just prefer one I haven’t bled all across. I hear Spain is nice.”

“Never been to Spain,” Klaus said. “I’ve been to France, when I was a kid. It was nice, except for the zombie robot trying to steal the Eiffel Tower. And then that incident we had to clear up at the Louvre. Great ice cream.”

Dave laughed. “Why do you do that?”

“Do what?” Klaus asked.

“Say such outrageous things.”

Klaus looked down into the glass and swirled it around in his hand.

“I don’t know what you mean, Dave. I’m just trying to share my life with you. Isn’t that what camaraderie and morale are all about?” He waved the hand with the cigarette in it over his head as his voice pitched up onto the step just below hysteria around the word ‘morale’. All things considered, near hysteria was the place where Klaus seemed most comfortable. It was the quieter, more introspective things that always seemed to leave him off balance.

He tilted his head back and downed the rest of the drink in one go. Then he unsteadily leaned forward and placed it on the ground next to them. Dave reached out a steadying hand and placed it against the small of Klaus’s back. When Klaus straightened himself up he stretched his arms high, showing an incredible amount of skin as his shirt lifted with them. Dave wanted to slide his hand up the expanse of his back. He pulled it away instead.

“You know the really shitty thing about being here,” Klaus said, before taking another drag of his cigarette and settling back against the wall a little closer to Dave.  

“Everything?” Dave ventured.

He waited for Klaus to laugh again, because Klaus always laughed when Dave talked shit about their situation or fate in general. No laughter came. It seemed that Klaus was now past the point in the night where he could laugh about anything as trivial as fate.

He turned his head to exhale the smoke away from Dave’s face and said, “I almost feel like I’m worth something here. Like, in spite of all we did as children, I’m just now leaving a mark on the world. It’s a dirty, blasphemous mark, but the earth finally knows I was here.”

Anger flared in Dave that anyone had ever made this man feel that he wasn’t worth anything. At Klaus’s family. At his ex-lovers. Whoever. Dave wanted to hit something. He’d spent the last year being conditioned to react to this feeling of helplessness with violence, but he couldn’t bring himself to be violent in the face of Klaus’s simple declaration of loneliness, and that left him feeling lost. There wasn’t any way to punch another person’s fear in the face, unfortunately.

Instead he reached out with a flat palm and placed it against Klaus’s cheek, cupping his jaw. “Hey,” he said. “No. No no no, okay? I don’t care who told you that before. You are worth something here, but that’s because you’re worth something everywhere. You’re worth everything everywhere.”

Klaus turned his face into Dave’s palm and Dave felt the hitch in his breath as it ghosted across his skin. “Fuck,” he said. “I’m sorry. We were having a good time. I didn’t mean to—”

“Klaus,” Dave said.

Klaus looked down, dark eyelashes fanning across pale skin, and flicked the ash from his cigarette.

“Klaus,” Dave said again. “Klaus, Klaus, Klaus, Klaus.” Each successive repetition of the name came out just a little quieter than the last. He wished he could also fade them out, let himself become a current that flowed out and away from this place and took both of them with it to the South China Sea.

“That’s my name,” Klaus said with a tired huff. “Don’t wear it out.”

“Oh.” Dave licked his lips. “If only you’d let me.”

He was kissing Klaus before the slow, sloshing haze in his brain properly caught up with him.

He half expected Klaus to pull away. Not because he thought he was wrong about what had been happening between them, but because they were in a strange place, basically in public in spite of being hidden by an alcove wall, and he wasn’t sure Klaus’s melancholy would allow for it.

It did allow for it, and as Dave ran a finger down Klaus’s neck and up his jawline Klaus shifted his weight and leaned into Dave, kissing him back.

“Yes,” he said against Dave’s lips. “I wasn’t sure, I.”

“I’m sure,” Dave said, and cupped Klaus’s face in both of his hands. He turned them so that Klaus’s back was against the wall.

Klaus looked down to make sure he was actually stubbing out his dropped cigarette with the toe of his boot. Then he leaned back against the wall and raised his arms over his head. His tattoos were on full view and Dave took the moment to study them. He bracketed Klaus’s head with his forearms and reached for the umbrella, running his thumb over the smooth skin and wondering how old it was, why Klaus never talked about getting any of them when they’d both sat through approximately five hundred conversations about every tattoo in the unit.

“Hey,” Klaus said. “My dick is down here.”

Dave kissed him again, gently in spite of Klaus trying to return it more aggressively, and then pulled away.

Flushed, with his eyes narrowed and his wet lips parted, Klaus looked sleepy. Dave had had this dream before, just the two of them kissing muzzily in clean white sheets, no urgency or real intent, somewhere where there would be no drills or gunfire or death. Somewhere where there would be a morning breeze with only the slightest hint of smoke on it. He’d been here so long it had become hard to believe he would ever have a life that didn’t smell of smoke.

“Is this okay?” Dave asked.

“Do I look like I have a problem with it?” Klaus responded. He dropped his left hand onto Dave’s head, ran his fingers through his hair.

“I mean, after, when we’re not standing right here, hiding, drunk. Is this okay?”

The little Dave knew about Klaus’s life was rough and tumultuous: drugs, fights with siblings, an uncaring father, literal ghosts, emotional ghosts. He had the suspicion that not a lot of people actually asked Klaus what he wanted. Not that he guessed Klaus ever played coy about the things he did want and what he would do to get them, but there was more to Klaus than his body and his power and his addiction. He just wasn’t sure Klaus knew that.

Klaus closed his eyes. He parted his lips and slumped his shoulders. Dave had seen Klaus submit to the power of others many times. If he was high or in a mood he might fight back just for the chance to be vicious, but in the end he always deferred power for the sake of diffusing the tension. Either by making a joke of the situation or by curling into himself like a touched fern.

Dave had seen him do that and this moment between just the two of them didn’t feel like that. This wasn’t Klaus avoiding or deflecting confrontation, this was him surrendering to it. It felt like an unfurling, like pinna flattening out to catch the sun.

“Yes,” Klaus said. He let out a slow breath and trailed his hand from Dave’s hair, down the back of his neck, over his shoulder, and then rested it on his hip, balling his fist around the fabric of Dave’s shirt. “I’ve been thinking about what it would be like to fuck with you for months. You’re a real beauty Dave. A scholar and a gentleman and I can swoon over you if you like, but I’d rather just, fucking. Fuck.”

He grabbed both of Dave’s hips and pulled him close, so that there was no longer any space between them. Their noses hit and Klaus’s teeth caught Dave’s lip, but then they were kissing again. Klaus pushed his body against Dave’s with all the weight in his thin frame. Dave pushed back so that he wasn’t knocked onto his ass.

In the back of his head there was a small thought that anyone could come around the corner and see them, but he didn’t care. Not as much as he cared about Klaus arching up into his body or finally getting to run his hands up underneath Klaus’s shirt and feel the warm, smooth skin against his palms.

Finally, Dave felt thunderstruck. Klaus smelled of smoke. Together they might set the whole damn country alight.

 

* * *

 

They broke into the tree line just as the light of dawn was starting to seep over the horizon. Behind them there was blue from the sky beginning to collect in pools in the rice paddies and ahead of them the shadowed remnants of the night were caught in the branches of the trees. Carlson raised his hand so that they all stopped and spread out around him, rifles up, hands only near the triggers. With any luck they'd only need to use them to nudge brush out of their way.

Every man stared hard into the jungle, except for Klaus, who was positioned to Dave's right. His rifle was slung low and his expression was pained. He was looking across the ground ahead of them with darting eyes and shaking his head.

“I can't,” he whispered.

“You can,” Dave said quietly.

“No,” Klaus said, but he didn't say it to Dave. He said it to the tree ahead of them, and to the one to the left of it, and to the one left of that.

Carlson lowered his hand and they all stepped forward as one except for Klaus.

“Fuck,” he whispered. Dave turned back to look at him and Klaus finally looked him the eye. He mouthed _I'm sorry_ , and then stepped forward and said, “stop.”

It came out as barely more than a dry whisper. The men took another step forward and Klaus swallowed and closed his eyes. “St-stop!”

This time it was loud enough that every man turned to look at him. The looks ranged from curious to hostile. Dave knew what they were thinking. The jester, the ghost whisperer, the careless fuck, at it again. He believed in Klaus, but even he didn't know where this was going right now. The timing put him on edge.

“Did I put you in charge, Hargreeves?” Carlson asked.

“No,” Klaus said.

“Then why do you think you can give the orders?”

Klaus shifted his weight from one leg to the other and back, unable to stand still. “I don't. I'm not. They're so loud. They want us to stop.”

“The whole damn north end of this country wants us to stop. That doesn't mean we stop listening to orders.” Carlson stepped out of line.

Klaus threw his left hand up to stop him.

_GOODBYE_.

Dave felt a sudden sense of deep fear that he usually reserved for actual gunfire.

“Stop!” Klaus begged.

When Carlson shifted his weight to take another step Klaus jumped into action. He moved faster than Dave had ever seen him move, weaving nonsensically through the open edge of the tree line until he collided with Carlson. They went tumbling backwards, both hitting the ground with heavy thuds, rifles knocked askew. The strap on Klaus’s came undone and it skidded to a rest on the jungle floor near Cunningham’s feet.

Carlson shoved Klaus off him. “I swear to god. When we get back to a place where I can leave your ass I—”

“Look at the ground!” Klaus shouted. “Look!”

Dave gingerly inched forward and pushed the leaves and jungle matter out of the way with the nose of his rifle. There, nestled unassumingly in the leaf litter and dirt, was the wax tip of a small mine.

“Landmine!” he called.

At that the rest of the soldiers followed suit, calling what they found. They seemed to be set five feet apart along the jungle's edge. One of them was placed directly where Carlson would have stepped if Klaus hadn't body checked him.

“Klaus,” Dave said. “What do you see?”

“Men, and women. Soldiers and civilians. Standing over them. They're shouting. Wailing. It's so loud.” Klaus covered his ears with his hands and put his forehead on his knee.

“No, hey. Don't do that now,” Dave said, calm but firm, the way he'd talk someone through shell shock. “How many are there?”

“Hundreds,” Klaus said. He looked up, squinting as if there was a bright light above him. “But...thirty? Forty mines maybe? It’s hard to tell. In a loose grid six across and five or seven deep, depending.”

“So we just have to get around the perimeter of them?”

Klaus nodded, his hands still over his ears.

Carlson pushed himself up off the jungle floor and righted his rifle. He picked up Klaus’s as well and held it out to him. “See to this strap, soldier. It’s a hazard.”  

It was the most of an apology that Klaus was likely to get from him. Klaus accepted his rifle and stood up, fidgeting with the strap to get it back together. When he met Dave’s gaze the look in his eyes was intense. Dave knew exactly how loud the wailing of forty people was. It could drive a perfectly sane man mad in short order. How loud would that be magnified by ten?

Had Klaus been hearing every person who died near where they were every day? Dave couldn’t even begin to comprehend how many people that was. Klaus didn’t talk about them often, but Dave had assumed that was because he just didn’t like talking about them. Had he also been saving Dave from the magnitude of it?

As they picked their way around the minefield and entered its coordinates for dissemination to intelligence, Klaus fell back so that he and Dave were last in the line. He walked with his left hand out, palm up, occasionally clasping his fingers over what Dave assumed were the hands of people he couldn’t see.

“Has it been like that the whole time?” Dave asked.

“Like what?” Klaus was distracted. To Dave’s eyes it looked like he was trying to make eye contact with every tree they passed.

“The ghosts.”

“Not always,” Klaus said. “Sometimes they just stand at the foot of my bed like fucking pervs.” He threw a pointed look over his shoulder.

“Tietz?”

“He’s really het up about those coins.” He flicked off the jungle behind him. “Yeah, yeah, sshhhhhhh! You’re gonna get me sent up for insanity man. Just give it up!”

Klaus screwed his face up in a way that made Dave think he didn’t like Tietz’s answer. Dave watched the living side of the conversation happen for a few more minutes before bumping Klaus with his shoulder. Klaus turned to look at him.

“You know, I bet they’d believe anything you said now. You’re a fucking hero.”

Klaus frowned. “I’m not. I’m a selectively useful fool. I was just trying not to be used up to now.”

“You didn’t have to say anything. I know how much you don’t like to talk about it.”

“It’s not the talking about it, it’s that no one ever believes me.” A whine crept into his voice that Dave was well familiar with at this point. “Contrary to popular belief, I don’t like it when people are afraid of me, or think I’m a crazy person, or are afraid of me because they think I’m a crazy person. Here and back home. I’m just trying to make it to the next hit. As long as I’m gonna be breathing, I might as well be feeling good, and I might as well have some control over both of those things.”

“You could use this, you know. Get yourself discharged. Somehow, probably. It’s not like being a small cog in a large army comes with a wealth of control.”

Klaus looked at Dave and then looked up ahead of them. Dave did the same. The next closest man to them was a good ten feet up and focused on creating a path ahead of him. No one was watching. Dave relaxed his hold on his rifle and let it rest against its strap. He dropped his right band between them. Klaus did the same and reached for Dave with his left.

They didn’t hold hands long. This was a military operation, after all, not a community picnic, but Dave just needed to feel Klaus right then, needed to know for sure he was real. Klaus was shaking, still pulled taut, probably skirting the edge of a panic attack. Dave squeezed. Klaus squeezed back. They let go and took up their rifles again, picking up their speed.

“Go the fuck to hell, Tietz,” Klaus said.

Dave stifled his laugh in his elbow.

 

* * *

 

Dinner that evening started like any other, with the men spread out among their cliques. Klaus and Dave were together at the far edge and arguing quietly with each other, about music this time. Klaus insisted that the best album ever made was by some band called the Pixies. Dave had never heard of them, but he'd be damned if they were better than Simon and Garfunkel.

The look on Klaus's face when he said that was incredible and the small pleasure of that light outrage would carry him for several days.

As they were finishing up Green came over and awkwardly stood near the edge of the table. Klaus put down his spoon and looked up at him. “Yeah?”

Green stepped forward, scraping his toe along the floor as he moved. “Hey, uh,” he scratched at the back of his neck. “Can I ask you something?”

“I can’t stop you,” Klaus said.

Green looked between them, clearly wanting some privacy, but Dave knew that Klaus wouldn’t want to be left alone with Green or any of the other men. Dave scooted down the bench to leave space for Green to perch. Green looked at the floor for a minute and then slid onto the bench next to Dave.

He drummed his hands on the table, probably gathering his thoughts. Klaus took the moment to light a cigarette. He offered it to Dave, like he always did. Dave shook his head. Klaus raised an eyebrow at him and opened his mouth in an _o_ , blowing out an almost complete smoke ring, a skill he’d been practicing for almost a month. Green watched all of this and shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

Dave also shifted uncomfortably in his seat, but for a different reason, he was pretty sure.

“So,” Green started. “About that thing you did.”

Klaus drew one of his legs up onto the bench so he could curl into himself a little and prop the hand holding the cigarette across his knee. His eyes were focused somewhere on the table between them.

He was bracing himself, Dave realized. He wondered how many times this exact conversation had gone badly for Klaus.

“Yeah?” Klaus asked.

Green took a deep breath and let it out in a rush along with his words. “Can you do that like, on command?”

Klaus tilted his head and scratched his ear with his free hand, still not making eye contact. “It depends,” he said.

“On what?” asked Green.

“On a lot of things,” Klaus said. “I can try to reach whoever I want, but I can’t just turn the radio dial and try to pick up a new station if the one that comes through isn’t a song you like.”

“Oh,” Green said. “That must be scary.”

Klaus took another drag off the cigarette and flicked the ash onto the floor. “Sometimes,” he said.

_All the time_ , Dave thought, because he’d been watching Klaus deal with this since the beginning, even before he knew what he was seeing. Dave suddenly realized that the rest of the mess had gone very quiet. When he looked over his shoulder he found that almost every man was watching them.

Klaus kept his head and his voice low. “Is that what you wanted to know?”

“Yes,” Green said. “I mean, no. I mean.” He let out another loud exhale. “Can you contact my brother?”

Klaus looked up then at the space over Green’s shoulder. He narrowed his eyes. “An inch or so taller than you? Broad shoulders? Slightly darker skin? A face like a male Aphrodite?” He looked askance at Dave as he said that and winked. “Yeah man, I don’t need to look for him, he’s been here the whole time.”

“Oh!” Green said. Then the meaning of that hit him full in the chest. “Oh,” he said again. “I thought that, maybe—”

Green had only gotten word about his brother via correspondence from his father a month earlier. The fact that he’d been there, shadowing him for close to six months at least, knocked some of the wind out of him.

“I’m sorry,” Klaus said. It sounded sincere.

Green nodded. “D-does he, need anything?”

Klaus looked over Green’s shoulder again and, unexpectedly, his face split into a wide, easy smile. “He says to make it out of this in one piece so he can get some fucking rest.”

Green laughed in spite of himself. Then he laughed harder. Then he started to cry. Klaus leaned back a bit and grasped at the collar of his vest with his free hand, alarmed at this turn of events.

_Hypocrite_ , Dave thought, but not uncharitably.

He’d seen Klaus’s laughter turn into tears at least fifty percent of the time it manifested. It was always harder to handle tears when they weren’t your own, though. A thing he’d had a vague inkling of in his old life, but which life here had really hammered home. It was especially hard when they were Klaus’s tears, because so often Dave couldn’t do anything about them and it left him feeling helpless and useless when all he wanted was to be there for Klaus however Klaus needed him.

Carlson cleared his throat. Every face in the dining hall turned to look his way. He stood and paced a few feet away from the table, then paced back. “So, I was thinking, we need a family tattoo.”

Klaus looked uncomfortable as he tucked his left arm into his lap. He stubbed his cigarette out in his plate and then got up and moved across the room toward Cunningham.

Dave dropped a hand on Green’s shoulder and left it there when Green didn’t shake him off. He sat like that, watching Klaus talk to Cunningham and gesture at the space next to him, and trying to listen for the moment when Green had put himself back together.

 

* * *

 

Dave came out of the showers to find Klaus leaning against the corner of the building. He was shirtless, smoking a joint, and looking up into the sky. Dave looked up as well, but he couldn’t see anything but blue. Not even a stray puff of white to give away the fact that they’d probably be getting torrential rain before dinner.

“See anything interesting?” he asked.

“Not at all,” said Klaus. “It’s great.”

He took another drag off the joint and then offered it to Dave. Dave accepted it. He still refused to smoke tobacco, but the rest of the men had finally worn him down on pot. It made him feel a bit like a wave interrupting the picture of a tv set. He liked it.

“Back home I used to try and take baths whenever I could. Just submerge myself in the water for as long as possible and listen to the sound of it sloshing around me, all distorted and full of nothing but myself. It almost worked, sometimes.”

“I miss doors,” Dave said, exhaling the smoke. “I miss being by myself. Being quiet.”

“I don’t miss doors.” Klaus took the joint back. “House I grew up in was full of doors. I never close a door if I can help it.”

“If I had a door I could touch you more,” Dave said.

“Fine, I miss one door I’ve never met. Though, if I could take you home with me I’d make sure we fucked in every room of that damned mansion with all the doors and the windows open for good measure. As long as you don’t mind me using you to piss of dear old daddy’s ghost a hundred or so times.”

“I usually try to make fathers like me.”

“You’re immensely likable, Dave, but unfortunately Daddy Dearest didn’t have a liking bone in his body. Not even when it came to charming, handsome soldiers who want to make an honest man out of his son.”

Dave took the joint back. He and Klaus had never talked about what would happen to them after the war. They’d certainly never talked about it in terms of being together. _Honest_ , Klaus said. Dave had thought he could tell by now when Klaus was kidding and when he wasn’t. He wasn’t sure about this.

“Mansion, huh?”

Klaus lowered his gaze and gave Dave a smirk that, combined with the public setting and air between them, caused him physical pain. “Lotta rooms, Dave. Better eat your Wheaties.”

“I’d like to see your home. Like to see what kind of soil grew you up to be, well.…”

“Stunningly attractive?” Klaus ventured. He twirled a finger in what little bit of hair he had and batted his eyelashes. “Perfectly postured? Daring? Eloquent? Well-spoken? I did _take lessons_ you know, _David_ ,” he said, putting on a ridiculous accent Dave had never heard anyone use before. “We all did. Nothing but the _perfect little murder children_ for Daddy.”

Dave tried not to laugh and only succeeded in choking himself on the smoke settling in his lungs. He gave the joint back to Klaus, deciding he’d had enough of that.

“Sure, those things,” he gasped out, tears prickling in his eyes. Klaus knocked him hard on the back a few times. “I’d also like to talk to whatever nuts recruitment outfit gave you anything as impractical as that briefcase. You should have left that thing behind months ago when you got a real pack.”

Klaus pulled his hand away and went very still, like he did whenever something he didn’t trust, human or ghost, got too close to him. “I can’t get rid of it, Dave.”

“I’m sure whatever is in it would fit in with the rest of your bundle. It can’t be that important, and it’s all beat to hell anyway.”

“No,” Klaus said. He sighed and ran a hand over his face. “Dave, if I tell you something impossible will you promise not to think I’m crazy?”

“Absolutely not,” Dave said. “But you’ve told me impossible things before, so shoot.”

Klaus leaned into him and looked around the corner of the showers. He grabbed Dave’s elbow and pulled him to the back of the building and then through the camp, skirting other buildings and soldiers as they went. Dave was sure they made an odd pair: he holding a towel and wearing a shirt that was clinging uncomfortably to his still damp skin, Klaus shirtless and barefoot and pulling Dave behind him as he moved with intense purpose. When they finally stopped they were standing near the camp perimeter between a line of trucks and the shade of the trees.

“Well,” Dave said. “I didn’t know you were going to drop state secrets on me. I would have dressed for the occasion. I would at least have put on a proper shirt.”

Klaus put a finger over Dave’s mouth. He was as serious as Dave had ever seen him. “You can’t yell.”

“Why would I—"

Klaus hissed at him. “Just promise.”

“That I can promise,” Dave said. “No yelling. Scout’s honor.”

“I can’t get rid of the briefcase because it’s my ticket home.”

“Do you mean espionage or something?”

“No,” Klaus said. “I mean literally. It’s what brought me here. I opened the briefcase, bam, I fall right out of your fucking army handbook wet dreams. I open it again, I fall, well, somewhere. I hope it’s home. I haven’t tried it yet. Obviously.”

“I’m sorry,” Dave said slowly, trying to give his brain time to catch up. “Come again?”

“I’d love to, but it’s not really the time.”

“Klaus, _not obviously_. Say it again. In English this time.”

Klaus looked up at the sky, raised his arms and clasped his hands behind his neck, bent over like he was looking for something in the dirt, and then stood up again and let his arms fall to his sides.

“Okay, long story long. These weirdos in masks came to the house. In the future. Er, your future. My then? They were looking for my brother. He’s a time assassin. I guess they’re also time assassins? But in my case they were just time kidnap-and-torturers. They didn’t find my brother, because he’s been off with his mannequin girlfriend muttering about the apocalypse for the last four days. They did find me. So they took me hostage. And then they tortured me for many, many hours. And then my brother’s not girlfriend, another brother, this woman was a human, saved me. And then they shot her and I crawled through the AC vent to get away. The briefcase was in my way, so I took it. I thought I could pawn it for drugs or something, because I was really going through it with the withdrawals, you know? Almost twenty-four hours with no drugs? That’s like, a personal record or something. Obnoxious ghosts popping up everywhere I needed to wipe out of my periphery AY-ESS-AY-PEE, but then I opened it and poof! Ended up here. In the past. My past. Our now?”

Dave felt the world lurch underneath him as if the wave had broken free of the television and was sloshing around in his entire existence.

“Did you catch all that Dave?” Klaus said.

Dave put his hand up. His brain needed a minute to run through all of it. There was a lot he didn’t understand and felt okay discarding, but he was stuck on time assassins and a briefcase that doubled as an inter-time airline. How would you even travel in a briefcase? Klaus certainly couldn’t have fit inside of it. It wasn’t a Narnia situation. Was that what the lightning was then? Not friction in weather, but friction in...time?

Klaus snapped his fingers in front of Dave’s face. “Fuck,” he said. “I didn’t mean to break you.”

But if Klaus thought that opening the briefcase would take him home, that meant that. It meant that. It.

“This is why I didn’t tell you,” Klaus said, snapping his fingers in front of Dave’s face again. “I wouldn’t have believed it before it happened, and one of my brothers lived on the moon for four years. I’m kind of impervious to impossible bullshit.”

“Klaus,” Dave said finally, shoving Klaus’s hand out of his face with more force than he probably needed to use. “You are a fucking idiot.”

“What?”

All the color drained from Klaus’s face. It appeared that, of all the possible reactions to that story he had thought he’d get, anger was not one of them. Which was a shame, because as the reality of the situation settled in Dave’s stomach, anger was all he had. And fear, but enough fear always sounded like anger.

“You mean to tell me,” Dave said, trying to keep his voice low and yell with his emphasis, not his volume. “You could have left this fucking nightmare at any time!?”

“No!” Klaus threw his arms up defensively. “Maybe? I don’t know! That’s why I haven’t done it?”

“Name one outcome that’s worse than this!?” Dave hissed.

“Well, I mean, Pompeii I guess, depending on the season. Or Land of the Lost? What if I came out on the moon? I won’t fit in Luther’s suits! I’ll probably implode!”

“Klaus!” Dave snapped his fingers in Klaus’s face, both to show him how annoying that was and to keep him from floating away on another tangent. “The answer is nowhere. You might die here tomorrow. You might have already died. There is nowhere worse than right here and right now.”

“Statistically, the world has seen a lot of armed conflict. There are probably at least fifteen different worse incursions that I might…”

Dave glared at Klaus so hard he could feel the vein pulsing in his forehead. Klaus stopped talking and looked down at the dirt beneath his bare feet.

“Please don’t yell,” he said again, his voice small.

Dave took a deep breath and counted to ten. He balled his hands into fists and un-balled them. Balled them, un-balled them.

“Jesus. Fucking. _Klaus_ ,” he whispered, just barely keeping it together.

“Oh, that would definitely be one of the better outcomes don’t you think?”

Dave put his hand over Klaus’s mouth to keep him from interrupting. “Do you know what it would be like for me if you died? Have you thought about that? Because I have. I think about it every night. I think about it every morning. I think about it every time some dumb fucking bullet fucking bends around you because apparently, you’re fucking indestructible.”

“I’m not, I—” Klaus tried, the words muffled by Dave’s fingers.

“I love you, you asshole!”

Klaus’s eyes went wide and his eyebrows slowly rose toward his hairline.

Dave pulled his hand away from Klaus’s mouth and used both his hands to cover his face. He took a deep breath. The confession had come out louder than he meant for it to, considering he had never meant for it to come out at all. There was no one else there to hear it, but Dave still felt like the whole world would know now. More immediately terrifying was the fact that Klaus knew.

Klaus took a step backward. Then he took a step forward again. He lifted a finger like he was going to make a point, but Dave smacked it down with his hand.

“I was, fuck. I was never going to say that out loud. But it’s true. And at this very moment I don’t care how soft that makes me, or how stupid, or how you feel about it. I love you, and I would give up my own life to send you somewhere where you would never be shot at again.”

“Ah,” Klaus said, “not home then.”

“Shut up,” Dave snapped. “You have to do it. You have to do it today. Get out of here.”

“I don’t want to get out of here, okay?” Klaus hissed back at him. “Because it doesn’t matter where it might go. If it takes me away from here I might as well be imploding on the moon, because I’ll be away from you, _you selfish prick!_ Two can play at martyrs! And you don’t want to take me on in this one, Dave. I’ve got a whole thirty years of lessons learned there!” He kicked at the dirt with his bare feet. “Fuck! I need some pills.”

He turned and started to storm off. Dave let him reach the back of the first truck before he rushed forward to catch up. “Klaus, stop!”

To Dave’s surprise, Klaus did. Dave could see that his hands were shaking, and so was the line of his shoulders. He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Klaus’s waist, pulling him so that Klaus’s back was flush against his chest. He took quick stock of their surroundings to make sure there was no one around the truck area, then he placed his lips against the back of Klaus’s neck.

Klaus let out a startled breath and placed his hands over Dave’s on his waist. He tilted his head back and Dave kissed his way up his neck to his ear, then back down again.

“You really should put on a shirt before you start an argument,” Dave said. “It’s hard to take it seriously.”

“You’re the only person in this camp who definitely doesn’t want me to put on a shirt,” Klaus said. He wiggled his hips like he was going to twist around in Dave’s arms, but Dave held him tight so that he had to keep facing away.

“No, don’t look at me, give me a minute.” Dave rested his forehead against Klaus’s right shoulder. “Listen to me, okay? Because if something does happen to one of us I don’t want you to only have heard it in anger. I love you.”

Klaus laughed and, in an exaggerated, ironic singsong he said, “Dave, you’re going to make me blush.”

“That’s not me, that’s just what the sun does to deathly pale assholes who don’t wear enough clothing.”

“I wasn’t going to let the sun anywhere near my asshole. I’ve made that mistake before, but if you insist, I—” He reached for the button on his pants.

“Please don’t,” Dave said, biting the inside of his cheek and batting Klaus’s hands away from his fly.

“I,” Klaus started again.

Dave held on to him, learning the rhythm of the breath moving in and out of in his lungs. If they had met back home, if they had met maybe anywhere else at any other time, Dave would know what it was like to lie in the dark next to Klaus, what the rhythm of his slight chest became as it settled into sleep. As it was he had these stolen moments. They might be all he ever had.

Klaus took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I don’t quite know how to, I’m not.”

“I know,” Dave said.

Klaus had only ever given him his life in spurts, and it had taken Dave months to figure that that wasn’t because he didn’t want Dave to know, but because he was only capable of talking about it in small doses. Because it hurt at least as much as all of this.

Dave’s past didn’t hurt. Dave had a mother and a father who loved him. A family who touched each other often. Friends who roughhoused, but who didn’t aim to hurt. Dave had had some heartbreak sure, but so did everyone. Mostly, when he thought of home he thought of safety. He wanted to take Klaus to that place, but since that wasn’t an option he would settle for what Klaus wanted.

“Why haven’t you asked to come with me?” Klaus asked.

“What?” Dave pulled his head up and rested his chin on Klaus’s shoulder so that he could see the side of his face.

“You could have said ‘I want to come too.’ You could ask me to bring you with me. It’s, it’s what I would have done.”

“Will it take two?”

“I don’t know,” Klaus said. “I don’t know if it was the only one they had or if they each had one. If I knew for sure I would have asked you that night of my nightmare. I wanted...I just wanted so much, but the rules are different here than they are in my own life. There I don’t need anyone else, not really, not for more than a high at least. There when people leave me alone I’m not going to die. I know, I’ve tried.”

Dave’s chest was tight. He kissed Klaus’s shoulder and his neck and the shell of his ear. He laced the fingers of their hands together and hugged Klaus close with two sets of arms.

“Here,” Klaus continued, “if you had said no I could have lost, well, everything. I could have lost what felt like a perverse sense of belonging, but perverse or not it was the first belonging I’d had in, I don’t know, since we were all seventeen.”

“None of us belong here.” Dave disentangled himself from Klaus and stepped away. “None of us Americans at least. But if you want to belong with me then congrats, you already do. Now come on. You need shoes, and I’m sure they’ll be looking for us.”

Klaus wiggled his toes into the dirt. “My powers work better if I’m not wearing shoes. I think it has something to do with the energy.”

“You’re so fucking weird,” Dave said.

“You love me.” Klaus leaned over and gave Dave a quick peck on the lips and then stepped off.

Dave followed after him. “You’re going to make me regret this aren’t you?”

“No,” Klaus said. There was a small, satisfied smile on his face that Dave had never seen before. “I figure your life is hard enough as it is.”

 

* * *

 

Dave woke to the soft patter of rain against the barracks roof and Klaus kneeling next to his bed in the dark.

At first he thought he was still dreaming, because Klaus had also been kneeling next to his bed in the dream, but that Klaus had been gasping for air as stab wounds appeared from nowhere across his chest and neck. The white of his undershirt had slowly become stained a deep red in the silver moonlight that was somehow coming in through the top of the barracks, a spotlight for Dave’s horror.

Now there was no moonlit spotlight, just the gentle blue light seeping in through the windows. Klaus’s shirt was glowing with it, clean and white.

Dave let out a shaky breath and propped himself up on his elbow. “What time is it?”

“Half past two,” Klaus said. “You were talking in your sleep.”

“Oh.”

“Do you want to go for a walk?”

“Yeah, just let me, here.” He rolled out of his bed. He’d fallen asleep in his pants and shirt so all he really had to do was pull his boots on. To his surprise Klaus was already wearing his.

When he tilted his head in question Klaus shrugged and said, “Rain.”

Because of the rain they didn’t stroll or have a conversation about where to end up, they just jogged for the showers and let the door bang shut behind them as they burst through into the darkness and fell together against the wall. Dave had his hands tangled in Klaus’s wet hair and his lips against Klaus’s lips before they even had a moment to catch their breath.

Klaus ran one hand up the back of Dave’s wet shirt and the other down into his pants and used his hold on Dave to crush him up against his body, sandwiching him between Dave’s want and the unforgiving plane of the wall. He slipped his tongue into Dave’s mouth and Dave opened up to him completely, ready to let Klaus have anything he wanted.

“What was the nightmare about?” Klaus asked, breathless, barely moving his lips away from Dave’s as he spoke.

“You,” Dave said. He slipped his knee between Klaus’s legs.

Klaus gasped and settled his hips against the crook of Dave’s thigh. He rocked against Dave once, twice, then stopped and pulled his hands away from Dave’s skin long enough to pull his own shirt up over his head and let it fall somewhere on the floor.

“What if someone comes in?” Dave asked.

“We’re already gonna give ‘em a show,” Klaus said. “Might as well make it a good one.” He tugged on the hem of Dave’s shirt and Dave pulled it off and tossed it aside too, leaving them even.

Dave placed his hands against Klaus’s shoulders and held him back against the wall. He ran his fingers across the pale, unblemished skin of Klaus’s chest. A dream, it was just a dream. Klaus was fine. Or this was the dream, in which case Dave didn’t want to wake up and deal with the disappointment of a life where this wasn’t happening.

“What was I doing in the dream?” Klaus asked.

“Dying.” Dave flicked at one of Klaus’s nipples and when that elicited a gasp he leaned in and placed his tongue on it.

Klaus groaned and squirmed against his thigh. “I’m gonna die right now if you don’t stop this teasing and fuck me for real.”

Dave didn’t want to fuck Klaus right now. He just wanted to touch him and look at him and prove to himself that Klaus was real and really his. He placed his hands against Klaus’s ribs and ran them up his sides and then down, dipping them into the waistband of Klaus’s pants, memorizing the slight curve of his waist and the narrow sharpness of his hip bones.

“You were bleeding. You were just sitting there, watching me watch you bleed out. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t—” His voice broke and he crushed his lips against Klaus’s to keep himself from trying to keep speaking.

There was no way to say what he wanted to say. Not any way that he thought sounded rational, anyway.

Klaus unbuttoned the waistband of Dave’s pants and slid both of his hands into the back of them, cupping his ass and moving him, rocking them together. Dave pulled away from the kiss and rested his forehead against Klaus’s. He looked him directly in the eye and let Klaus move him, let Klaus do whatever he wanted.

Dave wanted to leave this place. He didn’t want to do it with magic time suitcases or with ghosts, but he wanted to take Klaus away from here. He wanted to watch Klaus settle into belonging in a kind place. He wanted Klaus to be sober. He wanted the ghosts to let him be. He wanted neither of them to have killed. He didn’t want to know what Klaus’s time was like. He didn’t want to be any one time with Klaus, he wanted to be every time with him.

He wanted to make a constellation of him that only he could see. A dazzling pattern of stars that would burn against the sky for thousands of years. He wanted hidden pleasures and open ones. He wanted to live and live and live. He wanted to lose himself in this.

Klaus’s breathing was heavy. His teeth were dug lightly into Dave’s shoulder. His hands were now on Dave’s back and in his hair. His body was a livewire feeding Dave a surge he wasn’t sure he could handle. The rain came down harder, a thick den of sound that felt like a heavy velvet curtain drawn around them.

“You were so beautiful,” he admitted to Klaus. “I wanted to save you, but I also just wanted to touch you. I wanted to be red too. You make me feel so wild and I don’t know how to be the person I think you probably want. I only know how to be this.”

“This is good,” Klaus said. He rocked wide with his hips so that he pushed Dave away a bit, slid down to the wall, and then came crashing back up Dave’s thigh. “You are good.”

“Would you—" Dave’s breath caught in his throat as his body caught up with what Klaus was doing. “Think that if you had more options?”

“I’ve had options,” Klaus said. “I’ve had a lot of them. I want you.”

“I don’t want you to die. I didn’t do anything, but I don’t want you to die.”

“We’re all going to die.” Klaus started kissing him again. Slowly, deeply. It didn’t match the motion of their bodies, but it matched the intense need Dave had to feel like he was being swallowed whole by this irrepressible man.

When Dave came he felt like he was unraveling. They clung together against the wall as the waves passed, then Klaus slid down until he was sitting on the floor and pulled Dave with him. He kissed Dave lightly on the corner of the mouth and tipped his head back against the wall. Outside the rain let up, as if it knew.

Klaus fidgeted and pulled at his pants. “Ugh, I’m going to have to shower in these to even begin to sort this.”

Dave laughed and kissed Klaus on the cheek. “I love you.”

Klaus tilted his head and rested his temple against Dave’s forehead. “I dream about you dying too. It’s, it’s not beautiful though. I’ve seen too many different kinds of death, even before all of this, to mistake it for anything but what it is.”

“What is that?” Dave asked.

“A tearing out. It’s locating your favorite line in a book and pulling out the page and throwing it away, so you’re only left with the memory of it, except that warps over time, so you never really know if what you love is what was or what you’ve made it.”

“I love you,” Dave said again. He was afraid suddenly that he wouldn’t say it enough.

“You’re my favorite page too,” Klaus said.

Dave let Klaus collect him in his arms and hold him with his right hand splayed against Dave’s chest. As they listened to the rain continue to wind down Klaus’s pulse met Dave’s heartbeat.  

_HELLO._ _HELLO._     _HELLO._

          _LIVE._              _LIVE._            _LIVE._

 

* * *

 

Dave had not come into death believing in ghosts or miracles, not in a concrete way. He had spent ten months living with Klaus’s ghosts, but he had never seen or heard any of his own. That wasn’t uncommon for the living, only believing in their own experiences, even when they were presented with proof of another. He had spent the last year or so of his life ignoring what was in front of him in favor of what he thought was right.

It was easier after, standing in a place that was both nowhere and everywhere, to see that there was no right, only mistakes and lesser mistakes.

It was easier to see a lot of things. It was easier to see Klaus, which surprised Dave. He had always assumed heaven or whatever would be like a waiting room. Just millions, maybe billions of people he’d never known, milling about, maybe continuing on with their lives as if they’d never died, maybe starting new lives. Blocking out the living.

Dave would have been happy to start anew, to do it all again, to get a chance to treat other people better. But so far there were no other people. He was alone. Here he was, dead, and still unable to see the dead.

But Klaus, Klaus was a fluorescent burst on the horizon. It was his power. It worked like a magnet. Dave could feel the pull of it in every small piece of him. That part was not unlike being alive. Dave wondered if every ghost felt drawn to Klaus’s power in this way. If he ever saw another one he’d ask them. Because he knew how Klaus felt about the dead—how defenseless he felt, how helpless to stop them from showing up and impressing themselves onto his life—but he had never considered that the dead might feel the same way about Klaus.

By the time Dave reached Klaus he was sideways on the floor, tied to a chair, crying, shaking. Dave couldn’t tell if it was the pain of withdrawal or the pain of fear, but he could feel that it was pain. He felt Klaus’s pain in that moment more vividly than he remembered the pain of dying, which was curious because, of the two of them, he was the one with a bullet wound still open in his chest. He had told Klaus that he had wanted his blood, wanted to be painted red too. Now he had his wish.

He circled Klaus, knelt over him, tried to lift the chair, or at the very least touch his cheek. He wanted to make himself known. He wanted to comfort the man he loved and help him through this, whatever this was.

He couldn’t do any of it. So he sat next to him and waited, trusting that eventually Klaus’s blood would run clean enough of the drugs and alcohol that Dave would be able to poke his head through the haze of it all, to reach through this invisible barrier and grab on to him.

“Do you think,” he began, knowing that Klaus could not hear him, “that you would have loved me in this time of yours? I don’t know if I could have been the same person for you. I don’t know enough about life in your time to know if I would have missed some integral road trip or broken arm or argument or, or first kiss, that could have been the thing that turned me into the person you loved.

“I can see now how you needed the person I was. Am? I don’t know anymore. I still feel like me. Will that go away over time? Is it me who has to remember the page, or is it you now? Most of the people I knew back then are dead in your time. When they are all dead, will I change into a version of me with only your input? How many of my faults did you see? How many of my curious glances did you miss? How much of what I hold precious were you too high to really remember?

“Nothing about you is easy, huh?”

Dave reached out and held his hand a few centimeters away from Klaus’s skin. He used to do this in the army, when no one else was paying attention, to see how much warmth he could pick up from an almost touch. To see if he could sense the vibrations between them, to divine if souls were real and if they were, if theirs belonged together, maybe vibrated at the same frequency. Nothing was conclusive, as far as souls were concerned.

Somewhere along time there was a ripple. Dave felt it move through him like a warning shot. He jumped to his feet and ran to the edge of the room, trying to see if he could orient himself to it, but there was no definitive destination to be found, just a heavy sense of going, going, going.

When he turned to look at Klaus, Klaus looked back at him, eyes bright and wide, small smile growing on his crumpled face. In that moment everything around Dave exploded out in a ball of confused feeling. He was suddenly overwhelmed by grief and pain and the heavy feeling of this house as the history of it weighed on Klaus through everything else.

“Klaus?” he asked, unsure how fully he was there.

“Oh my god” Klaus croaked through his tears. “I did it! It worked! Dave.”

Dave took a step forward, a sense of finality weighing down his heels as the time ripple caught up with him. He reached out, trying to force himself through the space as it solidified around him, but there was something stronger than Klaus pulling him now, back and away.

Everything collapsed to a narrow point and he was back where he had started, stepping out of his life, confusion and desire clinging to him like the smell of smoke.

 


End file.
